I Am Legend
by Richard Matheson
Summary
Following the war a mysterious plague began to decimate the world's population. It struck down anyone who contracted it. Scientists were not sure of the origin of the plague, or indeed of any real way to describe it or combat it. Those killed by the plague return from the dead as vampires. Civilization breathed its last amid the panic of yellow journalism and a last minute religious revival. One man survived. His immunity, he believed, was due to a bite he received from a vampire bat while serving in Panama.
Robert Neville, having lost his wife and daughter, continued to survive alone. By day he destroyed vampires as they slept and by night he barricaded himself in his home. For a time it seemed he would go slowly mad or perhaps drink himself to death. Finally, though, he began a systematic investigation of the vampire phenomenon, trying to find the cause and maybe the cure. He discovered that some of the vampires are living, and others dead. Slowly he played legend and superstition against the vampiric reality of his daily life, discovering the origins of the plague and something of how it worked.